Nova Scotian group claims connection to Mashpee tribe

Tanner Stening @tsteningCCT

Thursday

May 17, 2018 at 7:17 PMMay 18, 2018 at 12:37 PM

MASHPEE — A YouTube video depicting members of an aboriginal Nova Scotian community, who claim to be Wampanoag, has been removed after complaints from members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe that it misappropriated elements of their culture and tradition.

Tribe members say the clip, which is no longer posted on the video-sharing platform, inaccurately portrayed traditional Wampanoag hunting methods and cultural practices, such as the eastern blanket dance, a ceremonial custom in native culture symbolizing womanhood and the coming-of-age of young women.

Tony Cunningham, who was featured in the clip, is the chief of the community behind the footage, called the Sou’West Nova Metis Council, also known as the Nova Scotia Wampanoag, according to the group’s website.

The Nova Scotia Wampanoag claim to be descendants of the Massachusetts Wampanoag, many of whom trace their roots back to Iyannough, a sachem of the Native American tribe known as the Mattachiest, through the Bearse bloodline, according to Daphne Williamson, an attorney, member and adviser to the Nova Scotia Wampanoag.

Though they are not formally enrolled as a Native American tribe, the Nova Scotia Wampanoag are recognized as an aboriginal community by the Canadian government, said Williamson, who is also a spokeswoman for the group.

The community still practices traditional aboriginal hunting methods using bows, spears and knives. Traditional hunting still takes place in family groups, and there is still a “sharing of the harvest,” Williamson said. The community also gathers to feed their elders, who don’t hunt for themselves. While the practices and customs have departed from those of the Wampanoag people, they are derived from the native culture, Williamson said.

And like other Native American cultures, “we have our sacred fires and smudges,” she said. Many in the community still get their medicine from the woods, or pull moss, kelp or minerals from the sea.

“We call it a community because we haven’t established tribal status,” Williamson said.

But Williamson said they are not seeking tribal status and they are not asking for anything of the Mashpee tribe.

“The only thing we’d like to do is have a closer kinship relationship with them,” she said.

Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and an independent scholar of Native American history, first shared the video on Facebook on May 3. It was posted in 2010 by a channel associated with a tourism group based in Shelburne County, part of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

Her initial reaction, which others shared, was disgust. Peters said she thought the people behind the video were hobbyists, and that it was a gross misappropriation of sacred native culture. The discovery prompted Peters to contact Shelburne County to see that the video be removed.

“As tribal people we have often had our culture and traditions appropriated and mocked,” Peters said. “So we do react when we see things like that. It’s really harmful to us as people who have worked really hard to maintain their culture and traditions.”

It is unclear who was behind the posting the video, though it features members of the Nova Scotia Wampanoag. Williamson said she did not know the video existed, but acknowledged she knew the people in it.

After fielding complaints about the clip, the Shelburne County Tourism Association sought to have it removed, said Charlene Harris, president of the association. Rick Crowell, the Nova Scotia Wampanoag’s sub-chief, also helped in that effort, according to Williamson.

“That video was put up well before my time as president,” Harris said. “For eight years it’s been there and nobody has ever said anything.”

Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell did not respond to a request for comment by the Times deadline.

As part of Plymouth 400, which is gearing up for a retelling the story of the Mayflower’s voyage to Massachusetts through the eyes of the Wampanoag people, Peters said she worries about the spread of misinformation about Native American history.

“Balancing Wampanoag history with the world view of colonization and how that has impacted us has been really important, because our story has been largely left out and misinterpreted,” she said. “So when we see our history being misinterpreted by others, whether Wampanoag or not, we have to call that out.”

But Peters said she doesn’t deny these people their ancestry.

“They’re more than welcome to pursue that their own way,” she said. “Clearly there was a misstep here.”

The Wampanoag Nation consisted of 69 tribes, extending from Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island to Provincetown, according to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's website. Williamson said her ancestors were enticed by the English to settle in the Canadian province around the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians, when the British expelled the French colonists from Nova Scotia.

“Our oral history tells us the English wanted to establish an economic stronghold through the fishery and they wanted allies to get rid of the French,” Williamson said.

The English gave the Nova Scotian Wampanoag land grants in exchange for assistance in ridding the island of the Acadians in the mid 1750s, Williamson said. The community has intermarried over the years, she said.

In 2007, Williamson and several others from the community visited Mashpee during the annual Powwow that year. While there, she said she received a manuscript from a Lorraine “Rainwaters” Henry linking her and the Nova Scotian community to Wampanoag ancestry. Their status as an aboriginal community was also validated by the Canadian Senate in 2012, she said.

Peters said some members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe knew of the Nova Scotia group's existence but she is waiting to see the primary source documentation revealing the ancestral connection.

Should the link prove definitive, it wouldn’t be the first time a Native American group contacted the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to recover their lost cultural connection. In the 1970s, a group from St. David’s Island in Bermuda claiming Wampanoag descent, whose ancestors had been sold in slavery in the 17th century, established contact with the Mashpee tribe.

Peters said the cultural exchange that followed was “very intense.”

“There was a lot of work that went into that,” she said.

— Follow Tanner Stening on Twitter: @tsteningCCT.

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